Electrical lighting has become commonplace in modern society. Electrical lighting devices are commonly deployed, for example, in homes, buildings of commercial and other enterprise establishments, as well as in various outdoor settings. Even in a relatively small state or country, there may be millions of lighting devices in use.
Traditional lighting devices have tended to be relatively dumb and inanimate objects, in that they can be turned ON and OFF, and in some cases may be dimmed, usually in response to user activation of a relatively simple input device. Lighting devices have also been controlled in response to ambient light detectors that turn on a light only when ambient light is at or below a threshold (e.g. as the sun goes down) and in response to occupancy sensors (e.g. to turn on light when a room is occupied and to turn the light off when the room is no longer occupied for some period). Often traditional lighting devices are controlled individually or as relatively small groups at separate locations.
With the advent of modern electronics has come advancement, including advances in the types of light sources as well as advancements in networking and control capabilities of the lighting devices. For example, solid state sources are now becoming a commercially viable alternative to traditional light sources such as incandescent and fluorescent lamps. By nature, solid state light sources such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) are easily controlled by electronic logic circuits or processors. Electronic controls have also been developed for other types of light sources. As increased processing capacity finds its way into the lighting devices, it becomes relatively easy to incorporate associated communications capabilities, e.g. to allow lighting devices to communicate with system control elements and/or with each other. In this way, advanced electronics in the lighting devices as well as the associated control elements have facilitated more sophisticated lighting control algorithms as well as increased networking of lighting devices.
However, there have also been proposals to further enhance lighting controls. For example, it has been proposed that a lighting device may include a sensor and processing capability to detect gestural inputs from a user. If the sensor detects touch, the user must approach the device or an associated control panel and contact the touch sensor in an appropriate manner to input a gesture corresponding to the user's desired control of the light. More recent developments in gestural sensing technologies eliminate the need for actual touching, but such devices still typically require that the user make the appropriate gesture in fairly close proximity to the sensor on the device or at the control panel.
There have also been efforts to develop speech-command responsive control of lighting, using advanced speech recognition technologies.
In a somewhat related field a variety of entities are proposing controls for lighting and other functions in a building from a variety of portable user devices, for example, from remote controls or from mobile devices such as smartphones or tablet computers.